The proposal leaves in place high tax rates for many S corporations, subjects them to additional payroll taxes, creates new distortions between types of industries, and produces two tax rate bubbles.

They note these major S corporation changes:

Creates Different Tax Treatment for Manufacturing and Non-Manufacturing Industries

Camp’s tax reform package introduces complication with a new 10 percent surtax for non-manufacturing income. To make things more complicated, the additional 10 percent surtax would be calculated on a different income scale: modified adjusted gross income or MAGI. This essentially creates two side by side tax codes, a la the AMT, and individuals and businesses would have to calculate their AGI for one and their MAGI for the other.

As I noted, it doesn’t simplify the code by getting rid of the economically foolish Section 199 production deduction; it just moves it to a different section.

The Difference between Active and Passive Shareholders

The difference between active and passive shareholders is important for determining the marginal tax rates for S corporations under Chairman Camp’s plan.

That’s true now, but you’d expect a “reform” plan to get rid of this sort of gratuitous and difficult-to-enforce difference.

Changes to Self-Employment Taxes: the 70/30 Split Rule for SECA Taxes

Under current law, the IRS requires business owners to pay themselves a reasonable wage in order to prevent people from gaming this income distinction in order to avoid the extra 15.3 percent payroll tax hit.

Camp’s plan would replace the current reasonable wage standard with a 70/30 split, changing the rules for active shareholders. The rule would require that active shareholders of S corporations report 70 percent of their total earning as wage income.

I think it’s just one step on the way to a 100/0 split.

Tax Rate Bubble

Another element of Camp’s tax plan is the creation marginal tax rate bubbles. This occurs when a marginal tax rate, for example, goes from 10 percent to 15 percent and back down to 10 percent. We have a post that discusses the marginal tax rates under Camp’s plan, which you can find here.

When a “reform” plan comes with so many phase-outs and distortions, it’s not actually reforming anything. I think the Camp plan will come to be seen as a false move and a lost opportunity.

Annette Nellen, Revenues versus tax collections. “A recent blog post on LinkedIn’s Sales and Use Tax Legislative Updates included a comment from B.J. Pritchett suggesting that what governments collect in taxes should not be called “revenues” because it is not from selling goods and services.”

Just how many loads of laundry could one do with $460,000 in stolen quarters?

That’s probably not the question asked by public works inspector Thomas Rica, who pleaded guilty this week to stealing that much in quarters from the meter collection room of the New Jersey town for which he worked.

At the laundromats I used back in school, that would have been nearly enough quarters to get your clothes dry.